page_title: Kentucky
section_title: Economy
hierarchical_section_title: Kentucky / Economy
caption_attribution_description: 2012 Toyota Camry photographed in College Park, Maryland, USA.
context_page_description: Kentucky, officially the Commonwealth of Kentucky, is a U.S. state located in the Southern region of the country. It was admitted into the Union as the 15th state on June 1, 1792, splitting from Virginia in the process. Kentucky is the 37th most extensive and the 26th most populous of the 50 United States.
  The bluegrass region in the central part of the state contains the state's capital, Frankfort, as well as its two largest cities, Louisville and Lexington, the two of which together are home to over 20% of the state's population. Kentucky shares borders with Illinois, Indiana, and Ohio to the north, West Virginia and Virginia to the east, Tennessee to the south, and Missouri to the west.
  Kentucky is known as the "Bluegrass State", a nickname based on Kentucky bluegrass, a species of grass found in many of its pastures. It is home to the world's longest cave system: Mammoth Cave National Park, as well as one of the greatest lengths of navigable waterways and streams in the contiguous United States and the two largest man-made lakes east of the Mississippi River.
context_section_description: Early in its history, Kentucky gained recognition for its excellent farming conditions. It was the site of the first commercial winery in the United States (started in present-day Jessamine County in 1799) and due to the high calcium content of the soil in the Bluegrass region quickly became a major horse breeding (and later racing) area. Today Kentucky ranks 5th nationally in goat farming, 8th in beef cattle production, and 14th in corn production. Kentucky has also been a long-standing major center of the tobacco industry – both as a center of business and tobacco farming.
  Today Kentucky's economy has expanded to importance in non-agricultural terms as well, especially in auto manufacturing, energy fuel production, and medical facilities.
  Kentucky ranks 4th among U.S. states in the number of automobiles and trucks assembled. The Chevrolet Corvette, Cadillac XLR (2004–2009), Ford Escape, Ford Super Duty trucks, Ford Expedition, Lincoln Navigator, Toyota Camry, Toyota Avalon, Toyota Solara, Toyota Venza, and Lexus ES 350 are assembled in Kentucky.
  Kentucky has historically been a major coal producer, but the coal industry has been in decline since the 1980s, and the number of people employed in the coal industry there dropped by more than half between 2011 and 2015.
  As of 2010, 24% of electricity produced in the U.S. depended on either enriched uranium rods coming from the Paducah Gaseous Diffusion Plant (the only domestic site of low grade uranium enrichment), or from the 107,336 tons of coal extracted from the state's two coal fields (which combined produce 4% percent of the electricity in the United States).
  Kentucky produces 95% of the world's supply of bourbon whiskey, and the number of barrels of bourbon being aged in Kentucky (more than 5.7 million) exceeds the state's population. Bourbon has been a growing market – with production of Kentucky bourbon rising 170 percent between 1999 and 2015. In 2019 the state had more than fifty distilleries for bourbon production.
  Kentucky exports reached a record $22.1 billion in 2012, with products and services going to 199 countries.
  According to the Kentucky Cabinet for Economic Development, the primary state agency in Kentucky responsible for creating new jobs and new investment in the state, new business investment in Kentucky in 2012 totaled nearly $2.7 billion, with the creation of more than 14,000 new jobs. One such investment was L'Oréal in Northern Kentucky, which added 200 jobs on top of the 280 already in existing facilities in Florence and Walton.
  Fort Knox, a United States Army post best known as the site of the United States Bullion Depository, which is used to house a large portion of the United States official gold reserves, is located in Kentucky between Louisville and Elizabethtown. In May 2010, the Army Human Resource Center of Excellence, the largest office building in the state at nearly 900,000 square feet (84,000 m²) opened at Fort Knox. The new complex employs nearly 4,300 soldiers and civilians.
  Kentucky contains two of the twenty U.S. Federal Penitentiaries – USP Big Sandy (in the east in Martin County near Inez) and USP McCreary (in the south in McCreary County in the Daniel Boone National Forest).
  The total gross state product for 2019 Q1 was $213.313 billion. Its per-capita income was US$25,888 in 2017. An organization called the Institute for Truth in Accounting estimated that the state government's debts exceeded its available assets by US$26,300 per taxpayer as of 2011, ranking the state as having the 5th highest such debt burden in the nation.
  As of October 2019, the state's unemployment rate is 4.3%. In 2014 Kentucky was found to be the most affordable U.S. state in which to live.
caption: The best selling car in the United States, the Toyota Camry, is manufactured in Georgetown, Kentucky.
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